Jack Teixeira got security clearance despite history of violent threats

Teixeira was not on the run, but he was frantic. Over the past year, he had shared an enormous amount of highly classified government intelligence with about two dozen friends in a virtual clubhouse that they had set up on Discord, a digital platform especially popular with video gamers. It let Teixeira and his friends — who, like Charles, were mostly teenage boys — talk and play together online.

For more than two years, they had hung out nearly every day, and in the throes of covid lockdowns, usually all day.

Teixeira was just 21, but he was enlisted in the Massachusetts Air National Guard and worked as a computer technician inside an intelligence facility at a military base on Cape Cod. The job came with a top-secret security clearance that gave Teixeira access to computer networks containing some of the most highly classified information in the U.S. government. The boys looked up to him like an older brother or world-wise uncle.

Charles said the tightknit group of friends, who shared a love of guns and military hardware, understood not to share outside their circle the classified information that Teixeira brought home from work.

Air Force disciplines 15 people in Discord leaks investigation

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